VA Hopes Tysons Shoppers Notice Traffic Help

Mekdad Maroof is taking a break from hunting for deals at the Tysons Corner Mall. He hopes it's worth it for all the area traffic he'll face once he leaves.

"Like yesterday, one of the roads was closed, like 495 and I had no idea the road was going to be closed," says Maroof.

Well, now, he and other shoppers have some relief--sort of. Five plasma screens in the mall show in real-time traffic conditions on major roads in Tysons Corner, bus schedules and closures. It's an experiment by the Virginia Department of Transportation.

"It's just a lot of information that we want people to get armed with getting out of the Tyson's corner area, especially as we have some of the largest construction in the nation going on in Northern Virginia," says
Steve Titunik, a VDOT spokesperson.

So shoppers can at least sit in the food court rather than their cars. The project costs $100,000 a year to maintain-- some of that comes from the federal government. Although, it doesn't seem like any of that money went into signs telling anyone about it. Almost nobody had noticed the screens even though they were sitting a few feet away.

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